Jianqiao Zhang

Ph.D. Candidate, French and Francophone Studies

As a French major, I am mainly interested in Third Republic schooling and novels of the time. During my MPhil studies at the University of Hong Kong, I conducted research on the republican culture of France and literary stereotypes formed by the public imagination. I worked on a cross-disciplinary study of the interaction between the historical actualities and literary stereotypes of Third Republic institutrices, reflected in autobiographies/correspondence and in popular literature respectively.

I am fascinated by the unique identity and diverse literary representations of Third Republic teachers. I am keen on the study of teachers’ conflicting role as both fonctionnaires d’État and educators, and the changes in teachers’ mentality as they transformed from agents of revanchist propaganda to pacifists. As a Chinese, what I find most interesting is the subtle interaction between the French influence and the Chinese reception, in terms of scholastic patriotism reflected in literature, which is rarely mentioned in studies of wartime patriotic rhetoric.